Just before last semester ended, I finished my first ever intaglio print! (in-TAL-ee-o) The assignment was “inside/out,” so I went with an image I’m quite fond of including in my art: the blossoming of a rosebud. I’ve always liked to continue themes within my work across various mediums, and since I’ve done roses in both lithography and screen printing, it seemed fitting to do an intaglio print as well. Here’s what my preliminary sketch looked like.
Making the post a bit late, but I turned 21 in January! I spent the night celebrating with some friends around Seattle and Tacoma. First, dinner in Seattle at Pacific Cafe – Hong Kong Kitchen (my favorite hole-in-the-wall noodle place)!
(google search for my order from the cafe because it was so delicious I forgot to take a picture)
Before the semester got to crazy and midterms kicked in, my suite decided to have a “family” dinner party with a few of our friends over. We cooked delicious food, played good music, and enjoyed good company. It was a lovely time!
The chef of the night! Nick Lyon’16 cookin’ up somethin’ good.
Spring semester 2015 has started! Winter break was a blast. The coolest part? Road trip!!
My buddy Nick Lyon’16 needed to drive his car home to San Diego, CA, so he requested some company on his journey. Thus, my other friend Zeman Nathoo’16 and I decided to join him on the 20 hour drive…Despite the length of the drive, we had a pretty great time!
We stopped at some interesting places… Like the Denny’s in the probable cousin of Silent Hill, Rice Hill. It was a gas station parking lot with a Denny’s, and bunch of trucks…. and a 24-hour adult shop. The essentials, obviously.
Hooray for breakfast for every meal!
It took me and my future housemates, four months, two hundred and thirty Facebook messages, and one encounter with a crotchety landlord to find a place to live for next semester. We settled on Trimble Hall and I signed my contract on Monday, Feb. 23rd. Somehow we bypassed the housing lottery. I think it’s because we’re juniors. It was a sunny day and the tulips were starting to wink up out of the ground. I breathed a sigh of relief when I walked out of the student development building. The entire process had felt like Sisyphus and the boulder. I’d send out half a dozen messages trying to get one option lined up and then things would change and I’d have to start all over again from the bottom of the hill. That day I finally got to put down the boulder.
It had started innocently enough with a “Hey, would you like to live together next semester” and quickly developed into “I contacted the guy with the house with laundry and he said the rent was 1095 for three people. This would be 365 per month for each of us for 12 months which comes to 4380.” The guy with the laundry turned out to be a no go. Hint: when you ask the tenant if the landlord is easy to work with and he says “you’re very funny” this is not a good sign. This landlord eventually berated me for talking too long to the tenant and would not accept an apology. He wouldn’t even look at me when I left and frankly I wasn’t too sorry to be leaving him either.
It turns out that the process for finding off campus housing starts insanely early. Begin at least a month earlier than you think you need to. When my friends and I started looking for housing it was October/November. It turns out you should start at the beginning of the semester. The first idea I had of this was when one of my co-workers said that she was getting ready to sign a lease.
My friends and I ended up in an on-campus five person suite. Once we got everything together this arrangement took about five minutes to finalize. There will be a fridge, single rooms, and a couch to collapse on while we do our homework. I’m relatively low maintenance. My cooking skills extend to chicken, pasta, and pushing buttons on the microwave. So this will work just fine. All I will ask is that my roommates keep the place clean and the noise level down after ten pm. If they can’t manage this…well, that’ll be another boulder. I’ll be sure to start early.
No, not my birthday. On Wednesday it was my friend Mackenzie’s birthday and to celebrate we went out to dinner at the Rosewood Cafe. Rosewood Cafe is this cute restaurant a couple of streets down from Puget Sound that has the best sandwiches and a beautiful pot au creme du chocolat that will haunt you. I can’t believe that I only discovered this gem last year. And now that I have become mildly obsessed with Pretty Little Liars, I love this place a little more.
I am really bad at talking to people. So networking events and career fairs are like my personal armageddon. As you can guess I ended up attending a career fair this week as part of my never ending search for a summer internship (I have spent too many nights obsessing over the correct usage of a comma on my cover letters).
I arrived at the SUB which was where the fair was happening, checked in, and wandered around for ten minutes trying to work up the courage to talk to a recruiter. I found it very intimidating and was very nervous. I actually spent a lot of time talking to my fellow classmates in the beginning and learned some new names.
Finally, with the encouragement of a friend I walked up to the Amazon table. The conversation with the recruiter went really well and was very interesting. I was like ‘yeah, this is going so well’. And, maybe it was because the room was hot and there were photography lights flashing to my left and I was nervous or I don’t even know that caused me to faint. Yep, I fainted. In front of many people. People i may want to work for/with. It was MORTIFYING. I will cringe about this experience 50 years from now. I am still cringing about it even as I type these words.
Everyone was really nice and concerned. All the fainting stories I was told made me feel a little better. And I was able to joke that I was so excited about Amazon that I fainted. After assuring everyone that i was fine and indeed was not a fainting sheep in disguise I quickly made my rounds at other tables and left.
My first career fair definitely was not boring. Though I lost some dignity, I gained a lot of experience about how to talk to professionals about my interests and the career I want. the fair was worth it.
They’re here. I thought, you know: cookies are so different, there are so many types you’ll never be able to say that one is the best, etcetera, etcetera. I was wrong.
You guys think that I am kidding. I am not kidding.
At the Metropolitan Market on Proctor Street, the first thing you see when you walk into the store is The Cookie. (The capitalization is important: that’s what it is actually called. The Met knows what it’s about.) The Cookie is—well, how would one describe The Cookie.
I asked:
“Flawless.”
“It is deliciously gooey in the middle, but the outside has an amazingly satisfying crunch.”
“I heard the recipe is insured for $200,000.”
“One time, Gordon Ramsay ate one, and he thought it was the best cookie in the world.”
“One time, I used my entire paycheck to buy every cookie they had at the Met. It was awesome.”
(These are all 100% accurate things that other people have definitely said.)
On paper, The Cookie can be described as a giant chocolate chip cookie with walnuts. But it is so much more than that.
This is The Cookie in my hand. For size reference. This is The Cookie on my flat hand.
Each bite begins with a crunch that dissolves into layers of pure melted chocolate wrapped around streaks of cookie dough and thick clumps of walnuts. Chocolate streaks your fingers when you eat it. The smell—which is the purest smell chocolate chip cookie smell in the world—permeates through any room it is placed in. You walk into a room with The Cookie in it, and, like Pavlov’s dog, you immediately start salivating. It is that good.
A couple of my friends and I walked to the Met today. The Met is just close enough to the school to make it easy to get there, but just far enough that going every single day becomes a hassle. We entered—and if there was any question about what we were going to get, the people working there were loading cookies, fresh from the oven, onto the display sheet.
I will take all of them, thank you.
“Dear god,” my friend said.
“These are the best [CENSORED] [CENSORED] cookies in the world,” my friend said.
We loaded up on cookies (we bought other necessities like face wash and peanut butter across the street at Safeway, where it is mildly cheaper if you have a Safeway card). On the walk back, my friends nibbled on their cookies.
“I’ve already finished mine,” my friend announced, sheepishly.
“This might be my lunch,” my other friend said.
Chocolate smeared around their lips and fingers. We walked under the pale yellow sun. I adjusted my sunglasses and thought of the cookies burning a hole in my bag. The Cookies, I should say. I was going to go back to my room and eat them, and it was going to be the greatest thing ever.